The Seamstress and The Baker
by apollonialust
Summary: Two restless souls found each other on a dreamy night in Harlem. Can the taboo of black and white in a segregated world be conquered with these two lovers?
1. The Phone Call

The Seamstress and The Baker

The pleated skirt seemed to mock her with its crooked hem and uneven sleeves. She had thought of this masterpiece carefully in her mind the night before. Huddled under the lamp at the center of her twin bed she sketched the silhouette and found herself unable to temper the feverish slant of her hand.

Now looking at the dress she seemed bemused at the frumpy heap of buttons, pockets and fabrics that was so clear only hours ago. Olivia Pope did not do mistakes well. Her mother thought moving to Harlem was a mistake. She was determined to prove her wrong. She had scourged the colored classifieds looking for any kind of steady work. She had some success working in a factory filled with stone women that had children and husbands to feed. The utter hopeless made her sadden quickly. They fired her within a week because her fingers we're far too nimble for the manual labor. The boss although charming had told her with a Cheshire grin if she could put that body to work she could make an honest living.

Her mother had warned her to keep her legs closed to white men. The idea of them _white men_ seemed so farfetched. What would a white man want with her? She had curves that his wife with painstaking precision dieted away. Her hair although a marvel was a tireless feat in the morning, she's not sure she can bear their curiosity. White men didn't want trouble and according to the world black women were nothing, but trouble.

She kept her legs closed to any man for that matter. The chase was what men wanted she determined, but Olivia was human and love was story she had yet to conquer. Love was for idealist who read Hemingway.

Pursing her lips to together in a pout Olivia removed the frock from the still mannequin and hung it in the air to further inspect it. The paisley design looked like vomit and she hadn't threaded the buttons tightly enough, it was a disaster but it was her own creation. She just couldn't part with it so she found her trunk of discarded mishaps and placed it in the pile. Maybe one day she could sew it into a hat but for now it would live in the land of misfit fashion.

Her closet was lined with a varied assortment of dresses that she had tirelessly sewed to completion in the quiet den of her bedroom. Buttons strewn about the floor, half sewn garments lied in a heap at the corner of her doorway but her prized salmon ruffled butterfly party dress it was her greatest work and it stood regally on a still mannequin that her Nana had purchased for her on her birthday. Her family endured her _hobby _as they liked to call it, but Olivia knew she was destined to make dresses for Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and maybe even the First Lady.

The telephone chimed and Olivia almost didn't answer she was sure it was probably her mother calling to once again hassle her to move back to Atlanta. She stared at the crystal blue rotary phone for a full minute before blowing out an exasperated breath and picking up the handle.

For a few seconds all she heard was echoed silence, she bit her lip in frustration at the carelessness of the caller. Tapping her foot she waited impatiently until she heard static then her sister's whiny voice through the receiver.

"Livvie darling!" She screeched.

Olivia winced at the piercing pitch of her sister voice. "Damn it! Valina Jesse Pope I oughta slap your narrow behind for screaming into my ear." Annoyance flames her vocal chords.  
"Livvie now you know Mother would not approve of that foul language. I guess you have immersed yourself into the filth of the Negro."

A frustrated hand runs through her pressed hair. She couldn't possibly ignore her sister's quip. "Valina that's not you talking now is it and last time I checked you and Mother are definitely Negroes too."

"We are classy and refined." She rebutted smugly challenging her sister's every word.

"Bourgeois and uppity." Olivia snarked back in a haughty accent.

She slinks to her lavender and tulip detailed chaise. She throws her body on the soft cushions, lying with her face peering at the ceiling her feet tucked under she reaches for the glass of wine that she had yet to sip out of. The berry wine is smooth and sweet going down her throat.

"Livvie darling are you still there." Her sister's voice piped up.

Olivia rolled her eyes before speaking. "Is there a purpose to this call Valina? I am a very busy woman."

"Did you get the money Mother sent? She asked you to call her when you did." She asked with a faint hesitation laced to her question.

Olivia had indeed received the money. Most of it went two her utility bills she wasn't sure how long she could have gone without hot water. Boiling her water on the stove was awfully time consuming. She indulged a little and bought some sweet potatoes, a silk scarf and hot pink nail polish. A color her mother would despise. She took immense pleasure in the purchase.

Olivia cleared her throat twirling the phone's cord in her grasp. "So I assume she is using you to do her dirty work. I told you both I'm not privy to your fucking handouts."

"Language Livvie!" She chastises. "Look I understand you're going through this pseudo radical Negro phase and I applaud you for your commitment, but honey bring your tail back to Georgia before we all have a heart attack."

"I'm hanging up now." She interrupts. The absolute audacity of her mother and sister to dismiss her dreams as a fleeting propaganda orgy. Did they not understand the strength it took her to board that flight and soar away into a foreign city? She had no friends in Harlem. She could barely find a job.

"Livvie wait I'm sorry sister." Valina's voice cracked a little and it made Olivia soften immediately. She knew and understood that tone in Valina's voice. She shrinks back into the chaise closing her eyes blinking back the subdued tears. It isn't often that she cries, but she has a sentimental weakness for her sister.

"Has he asked about me? Olivia hates the desperation in her own voice. Memories of her father playing his trumpet in the dining room sway in her head. She had always been her father's pick.

"He hasn't mumbled a word. Mother thinks he's gone mute. I suppose he's just a little shocked that his prodigal daughter disobeyed his orders." She explained.

"Hush up now I'm my own woman. Daddy couldn't dictate my life forever. I went to Spelman like he demanded when he knew my heart was set on Howard. I'm doing something that makes me feel good, ok."

She had made a decision. A decision that haunted her sleep, but the dazzle of Harlem whispered her name. It lulled her with its sultry women and dapper gentlemen.

"Livvie I understand. I just miss you. It's lonely here with them it's like I'm living inside a Hitchcock movie. She jokes lightly before her voice breaks into a shuddering urgent whisper. "Come back if only for me. "

Olivia's chest tightened at the very thought of her sister alone in their towering colonial home.

"Don't you go making me cry? I will be home for Christmas sister. Make sure you save a slice of sweet potato pie for me."

"I love you Livvie. She whispers softly into the receiver.

"You swear."

"On the bible." The soft click of the receiver and her sister was gone.

Taking the phone from her ear she placed it at the center of chest. Home was miles away and yet she had no desire to return. She didn't miss the Colored and Whites only signs neither did she miss the tortuous nearly three hour church services. Heaven forbid she wanted to thank the Lord for only an hour.

She'd dreamed of leaving home and having a secure future. At the ripe age of 22 she had packed a suitcase that was filled to the brim of life not even her father's scowl could deter her determined gaze.

She's a black girl in Harlem. She's dreaming about trees weighed down by peaches and her grandmother's sweet water cornbread. Her life would be much simpler if she wasn't so rebellious. The world was not too kind to woman who thought too much of themselves. Is she foolish, perhaps but what's wrong with a little dreaming.

She wanted to live like a man, but really it was the freedom she lusted after, but what is freedom when it's shackled in barbaric law. She's got to get out her skin if she wants to breathe.

Putting the phone back on the hook she picks up her wine glass and downs the rest of the liquid before standing arching up on her tippy toes and taking a delicious stretch.

The wine glass is tossed into the sink and she saunters to her tiny bedroom. There she is all alone on the first floor of Sugar Hill Apartments. Adam Clayton Powell is in Congress, Zora Neale Hurston lives in a swampy town in obscurity and Langston Hughes has fled to Paris. Yet she's in Harlem sprawled out on her bed eyes closed anddreaming about love.

**A/N:**

**I've started a new story. I know no Olitz just yet, but be patient and our lovers will surely find each other. Let me know what you think. I was very nervous of posting this. Thank you for reading.**


	2. Strange Fruit

**The Seamstress and the Baker**

**Chapter 2: Strange Fruit**

Olivia was a nice girl. She had never done anything reckless. A string never dangled aimlessly at the hem of her skirt, her blouses lay pressed and starched at the swell of her cleavage. Every single part of her life was stitched and sewed to perfection, perhaps until now.

Stony bricks tower forth under the sienna sky. She had pictured Harlem with a painter's imagination. All dashing streetcars, women parading in leather gloves, men with a swaggering ease stalking along in zoot suits. Pig tails and barrettes flapping in unison as the jump rope stabs the concrete. Vendors chimed out chants that bragged about their fresh produce. Yes Harlem crackled with God's eye today.

She fans her scorched skin as the abundance of the grassy park opens to a throng of lovers, children on fledgling feet running with whipping rainbow kissed kites, mothers cooing lullabies to cranky infants dogs barking in symbiotic chants and a light airy flute player takes center stage up top a valley. It's a wonderful day to be in love.

The pumpkin lace floral dress she adorns with beaded and crystal embellishment rustle against the light wind. It isn't enough to stop the faint coat of sweat that forms on her brow she wipes away at it effectively. Olivia finds an empty bench that has minor scribbling of lover's declarations tattooed on its wooden perched. As if she we're a caution old woman she inspects the wording then swipes at the spattering of leaves and other outside rubble before taking a careful seat. A sigh leaves her throat and she finally able to enjoy the scenery before her.

For a moment she misses the Georgia red clay that would cake her kneecaps, the syrupy sliced peaches that her grandmother would whip up she misses her sister's wicked wit, but Georgia is miles away.

She fumbles with her faux ruby studded satchel looking for her sketch booklet. It's where her genius lies. The clear white pages stenciled with every silhouette imaginable. Billowed sleeves, ruffled collars and flared pants all the evocation of her imagination seems to bleed in the cobalt ink. She takes the pencil out the small zipped compartment and lets her gaze wonder upward. It's in the moment when sleep is drifting that she has a rush of brilliance. Her eyes pinched with slumber would ratchet open and she would stagger out the bed in search of paper to commit her ideas to form. A maddening pursuit of course, to not be in complete giving of your talent. There are those who control the vibrancy of their gift and then there is Olivia who is a slave to the beaded berets, scalloped waist dresses and long ribbons of fabric that paint the carpet of her apartment. She hadn't chosen a knack of fashion it simply beckoned her on a stormy Monday when she and Valina had played dress up in her mother's clothes. The expansive rows of outfits made the inquisitive child squirm with envy. She wanted her mother's clothes; no she wanted to learn how the crystal gems stuck to her mother's ancient wedding dress. The daring plunging necklines that showed only a peak of breast she was desperate to know the ways of fashion and surely the ways of fashionable woman.

Couldn't her mother see that it was her that had made her thirsty for pleated skirts? Her mother swishing her ample curves in figure clinging silk dresses equivocal of the wandering eyeballs of men taking lust hunted glances.

Olivia paid clear attention to her mother's mannerisms, her coy laughter, devilish smirks and patented hair flips. She wore one single shade of lipstick which was a peach tint that made her father simply riveted with want. Maya Marie Pope would have made Lena Horne jealous.

Deep baritone laughter frets Olivia out of her thoughts she looks out and see's an undeniably handsome gentleman a book perched high at his face with his head thrown back in absolute glee. His blasting stone blue eyes straddling her speechless. Two twitching fingertips cover her bottom lip, _he was wondrous_.

The prick of shock riddles her insides mush. She had found herself smitten by the laughter of a white man. Shaking her head s she giggles to herself at the perilous wave of lust. She could admire the rebellious charm of Marlon Brando but Sidney Poitier tickled her fancy.

It was strange the way she stifled attraction for the stellar lacrosse athletes that attended her families lavish dinners. A quiet town secret of white and colored intellectuals mingling in each other's homes. Georgia would rip with fiery.

The blondes one's always annoyed her their Anglo Saxon arrogance frolicked with no remorse but she couldn't resist the stuttering, shy whiskey stained curled beauty of men that we're Jewish, Polish and often regular Pennsylvanian that were tortured by the Negro plight. Yes, her mother had warned her of their seedy eyes, but she looked with curious attraction. To each other they we're things that neither could have. Dangled fruit that had been ripe with the sun's gleam but tainted by a wiggling worm.

A strange fruit.

Her eyes lift once more to the man and she doesn't expect to see his thoughtful gaze peering upon hers. She looks away bashful and a little frightened suddenly her skin is hot with not only the suns streaming focus. Shame pokes fun at her.

She wonder's when's the last time she had laughed that hard. Casting her gaze away she looks down at the blank page once more with precision her pencil begins a steady loop that draws the ruffled tail of a skirt.

It would seem they played a game of who can stare the longest without getting caught. Dangerous surely to openly gawk at a white man, but Olivia wasn't thinking of caution she had been swept away by the laughter wrinkles perched near his eyebrows, the starched apron that strangled against his willful body. She assumed he was a butcher the apron was decorated with scattered dots of what appeared to be frosting. This was odd certainly she couldn't determine whether it was specks of blood.

This mere stranger had the capacity to make her abandon her thoughts, perhaps even her mother's warnings. Olivia smiles faintly pulling her bottom lip between her teeth she bites hard, she wills herself to stare back down at her doodled sketch. Staring out once more into the green scenery she takes a breath focusing the point of the pencil on the less than clear sheet. She begins again.

With vivid curved lines she details a corset to accompany the skirt. Adorning puffy sleeves with imagined pearls tapered on the end.

Who would be her muse? Harlem was brightened with artists. Typewriters clicking away with searing provocation on black anguish. Dancers looped their bodies into pirouettes under tribal drumbeats. Singers scatting to a swinging key of F, but was there room for a seamstress? A woman with sketches stacked tall as mountains littering her room.

She wasn't so sure what she wanted when she took her first infant steps into the sturdy Spelman dormitory, but when her roommates oohed and aahed at her poised stylish mimics of couture. She had trusted her gut and bought her very own periwinkle blue sewing machine.

Alone in Harlem she was sure.

/

The radio flickered in and out and she tapped it with the palm of her hand. She would have to buy another; she was depending on the money her mother sent every two weeks. She wouldn't admit that to anyone but her own damn conscience.

Nancy Sinatra's smoked rasp contralto left Olivia simply in a sultry mood. Opening the bay window she let the night's gaze crawl in.

Tonight she would go dancing. Alone of course but she needed to get that white man's sensitive smile off her mind. Her father would disown her further if he even got a hint of her sniffing after a white man's affection.

Her father with callous reproach bristled at ever wayward crush she managed to admire. It was all the same. "Does he come from a respectable family?" Nearly ironic that he was an outright classist when his very own parents had been sharecroppers shelving every penny in mason jars, so their precious Eli could conquer the testosterone bridled Morehouse temple of prestige.

No daughter of his he sermoned would marry the son of a janitor or even a sharecropper.

First there was Edison Davis their rushed kisses in the back seat of his chilled car did nothing with Dorothy Dandridge nearly floating across the large projector, and clumsy fingertips taking nervous cups of her then blossoming breast.

She waited for that moment. The moment their lips would crash and the decaying ache of her heart would stumble and beat with ready beats of bloom.

Each date left her with a craving.

A quiet craving, because ladies did not snatch men by their collars and wrap their tongues around their cocks. No woman, _ladies_ must cross their legs, offer demure smiles and cock would be reserved for the wedding day.

They were all the same, the young men she courted. Polished with a veneer of politeness, pomade glued to their nappy coils, Bachelor degrees framed in their mother's china cabinets, but they always wanted to impress her father the respectable almighty, turning water into wine, making the blind see, crucified from his colleagues for his racial charged lectures, ordained Elijah Pope. The son of brittle sharecroppers.

The secret was nobody impressed Elijah Pope not even his prized daughter Olivia.

The Nancy Sinatra song changed to an old Billie Holiday hit that made Olivia spin around her sparsely furnished living room and turn the volume up on the jazz rhythm. The whirling blare of trumpets made her do a shimmy into her bedroom. She whipped off her night gown and pranced around in her stark white underwear. Her legs moved like a dancer finding rhythm for the first time. She swayed her hips a little before opening the large doors of her closet.

The bejeweled frocks and perfectly stitched dresses jumped out at her. Tapping her index finger against her chin she took careful glances at the uniquely organized bunch of garments that sat idly on hangers. She was surely pleased at her own creativity, but she wouldn't gloat at her own expense. She needed something to wear tonight.

First she grabbed the black sequined mermaid dress, a dress her grandmother had helped her sew the sequins on. She shook her head finding it to formal for a night out at the club.

Cupping four dresses by the hanger she poured them over her bed and stared at the assembly mutely not sure which would be appropriate. Each held a treasure of thought; the bubblegum pink taffeta mini dress had been a favorite of her mother's. Olivia had altered the neckline causing it to plunge dangerously and made it backless. The murderously coy gleam Maya threw her withered Olivia's prideful showcase. She told her if she left the house in that dress she would called the police and say there was a hooker parading around her neighborhood. Maya was joking, but the sting of cruelty never left Olivia completely. She wouldn't wear this dress tonight. The bittersweet flashes of her mother's disapproving gaze were seared in the fabric. She moved it aside peering at the pearl strap blouse. The pearls had been woven into lace, antique pearls that her great grandmother Rosetta had handed to her with a leopard spotted grasp on her death bed. A mystery was stamped in every shell. Had her great grandmother fallen in love with great grandfather's awkward stutter with these pearls on her neck?

Flipping the blouse around she admired the criss crossed design that left a trail of peek a boo flesh. Placing the blouse back on the bed she hangs the other dresses back up and with anxious fingers pushes back her row of skirts. The leopard pencil skirt catches her eye first. It did wonders for her hips lifted them into a statuesque figure, but she wasn't striving to be a vamp.

There was the cheery red leather lamp shade skirt with stitched white button pockets, shaking her head the silk and leather didn't blend seamlessly.

Olivia blew out a concentrated breath it shouldn't be this hard to dazzle. Ella Fitzgerald 'chirping voice broke through, tapping her barefoot against the creaking tile she tossed more skirts to the side her eyes brightened while zeroing in on a plum shaded floor length tulle skirt. _Perfect! _

A squeal popped out between her teeth, swishing fabric aside it was vintage, but retained a faux elegance. Pulling the skirt from the rack she reached for her nude platform heels and paired them next to the skirt. This would be the outfit that helped her reach infamous envy in the cluttered Harlem streets. She'd strut like a gazelle baiting the gnawing teeth predators. She'd be Eartha Kitt slinking like a feline a perfected devilish smile painted on her lips, hips sashaying to an invisible rhythm.

Beauty was a tedious champion of women's fragile insecurities. Poke and prod sensitive eyelids until they brimmed with a midnight lines of eye liner. Mascara embellished the natural curls of eyelashes and a faint tint of blush makes cheeks rosy like a Hollywood starlet. The pout of lips blended into a sheen of rose tea gloss. Chanel perfume rinse over the wrist and neck , soft thick curling iron scorched ringlets lay loosely at the nape of her neck a silver pendant in the shape of a rose pinned on the side of her head, it was tiring being a woman of immediate time.

Beauty made women envious and men ravenous with an adoring lust. They left their wives for beautiful women while women of course cursed the darling hussy who dared to tilt her nose at her own reflecting simmered image. Why had god- given looks been the pinnacle of women's mystery. Were they useless once they used up all their delicate cheekbones, sensual pouts and popping eye curls. Did it frighten the world that a woman could too pitch a homerun from the rowdy stands of Yankee Stadium? Was it too much for their ever crumpled egos to see a woman not moaning over the loss of a man but dancing a fire over his absence.

What had her foremothers done with their stifled rage did they recycle it and let it drip down into the stream of her genetics.

It was true she was born of women that had bundled colicky babies into tattered blankets and steeped a trail to a free land from the serpent whipped bite of the Mason Dixie line, but they had come back too because they missed miniscule things like peaches ripe from the sunshine. Red clay staining the soles of their feet and the singing twang of Southerners. Their roots had thorns that pinched and left poisonous scabs but it was home. A home that hated its own, a home viciously adopted to them from rocking slave ships with a sharks swarming the midst and a curling despair that made God whimper from the stench.

/

The siren shrill of the phone left Olivia cursing under breath. She staggered to the mirror admiring her own figure. She forced the shadowing glint of her father's rage to the back of her mind. He would wreck from a stroke if he saw her made up like a baby pin up. Straightening her spine she turns sideways looking at a body she cherished bashfully, the simple curves of her cinched by the elastic of the skirt, her small perky breast hinting out of her blouse and then there was her face. She looked like her mother. Maybe that was what caused Eli's careful stranglehold on her life. His wife he couldn't control, but his ferociously whip smart daughter he could curtail into his own manifestation. But Olivia ripped the reins he had so meticulously strapped around her.

She was Maya's Pope's daughter too. It was a betrayal in his own mind, at least. For Olivia it had been surrendering freedom over to herself.

Mischievously smirking at her dolled up features she paces out the bathroom and into the living room where the phone chimed on aimlessly.

Dashing for it on teetering feet she huffed into the receiver. She propped herself on an elbow and lay on her chaise carefully not wanting to mess up her hair or anything else.

"Hello." She waited almost patiently for the line to tick with her sister's voice.

" Livvie baby." Her mother's voice droned in.

Olivia nearly dropped the phone her breath stilling inside of her. She hadn't heard her mother's voice in a month a steaming argument left them both clueless with how to reconcile. Truly she hated bickering with her mother, but stubbornness made her literally froth with a tempering resent.

"Mother." She recited stiffly .

Her mother doesn't answer at first ,just steadily breathing but muffling the quiet but defiant tears that crust her eyes. What Olivia could not comprehend was her mother's hard barbs of disapproval and yet she had a molding sensitivity that would make her surrender to ever cripple emotion.

"Mother are you crying." She ask out of curiosity .  
A jagged breath suppresses from Maya's throat and Olivia wants to feel anything but the soaring sympathy, her mother always left her panting for affection.

"I miss you little girl. " She pines out pitifully. This gem was as close to any affirming love declaration.

"Oh Mother why must you manipulate my emotions. " Clutching her hand over her chest she shuts her eyes tight afraid she just may cry. She doesn't not for her mother.

Chuckling at her daughter Maya says, "You're stubborn just like your father why do I have a weakness for you damn Popes."

"You're a Pope too." Olivia deadpans quickly without thought.

"By default Livvie. I'm still carrying my grandmother's name strong."  
"Don't let Daddy hear you say that he will catch a proverbial fit."  
"Your father is careless with his emotions much like you."  
"Mama." Olivia slips letting the endearment fall from her lips. It had been forbidden that she and Valina ever lisp the utterance. Her father said it was country and terribly meaningless. Mother sounded pretentious just how Eli preferred. When he wasn't brooding over their household they let _Mama _soothe their childish wrinkled hearts. Mama felt good off her tongue shrieking like rippling lightning bolts.

" I think you're crazy." Maya begins with a laugh bottled on her tongue. " But I also think your brave challenging your father . Grandma Jesslynn says you have the devil in you, but she says that isn't a terrible thing. "

"Grandma is a heathen if there was ever an example."  
Her mother's haughty resolve falters and the Georgia reached out in her vocal chords. A husky timbre taking over. "Listen to you calling my mother everything, but a saint. You've got her spirit in you good, but you're all Eli down to the shaky bone."

"Mama I'm not him at all. He's a bully and a tyrant."  
" Hush don't you go speaking ill of your father. He's a bully but he loves you something selfish."

" You married him. Not me." A stabbing edge flutters out. She won't be completely peaceful.  
Maya gasp slightly , Olivia tugs on her bottom lip holding it captive with her teeth. She waits for her mother's harsh rebuttal.

"Olivia Carolyn Pope don't think Harlem is too far away for me to take a switch to your behind." The chastisement is chaste and doesn't have as much sting as her usual warnings.

" You would faint if you even harmed a hair on my body."  
" Your right, but Grandma Jesslynn aint to keen on sparing the rod."

She takes a curl flipping it behind her ear. It falls back down to her cheek ."Dear God did my mother the black bourgeois princess just use the word aint. What a scandal she has caused."

Their laughter is naughty and hiccupping. Olivia wants to hold onto the sound. She stops for a moment and just listens to her mother's pealing giggles. She was giggling like a blushing school girl.

Maya pipes down in laughter, "You devilish girl. Georgia misses you."  
"Well I don't miss Georgia. I'm sure it isn't waiting with baited breath for my return."  
"I am." Maya interrupts.

Olivia frowned "Mama you and Valina are awful for calling me with your puppy dog voices. I won't fall for it."  
" Look Livvie I'm not saying I agree with you going all the way to New York without a single clue, but I'm your mother and I reserve the right to miss you terribly."

The creeping softness awakens the dull ache that had coated her heart in ice. "I miss you too." She says, soft like cotton candy.

She imagines her mother at their home the phone's wire curled around her finger face glowing with something stronger than love, but a smile so bitter it looks like she's grimacing. She loved her children, sometimes her own bravado made her seem less than maternal. Often the two got into arguments but Eli would sweep in and untangle the wrath of words that they engaged in.

The two talked for a while longer Maya tells her that the amusing trio of professor aides asked about her often. This made Olivia silently happy. Their long winded spells of conversation had always made her tickled with clarity. She liked the nasal charge of their voices and she wasn't an oddity for them to pepper with halting questions. The night before she left she had almost thought of kissing Peter a quiet Jewish boy who kept his mother's sweater as his own. Her mother's voice droned in her conscience like static when the wavering moment presented itself. She wasn't as fearless as she thought the stagnant pull of wanting something so deeply primal, and confining her morals to the rigidity of the times left her tired.

Keeping her legs closed wasn't pure it was criminal. She floated through this divide of being a woman who needed not a man who would tower over her intellect, but a kiss to her temple, sweet slick moving thrusts tackling her body and a man not afraid of her dreams.

That blue eyed troublemaker peered into her thoughts as her mother carried the conversation along by herself. It was sinful how he stared but she was just as unholy. She wanted no she needed to forget his face.

Olivia closed her eyes and let's out an agitated sigh the phone call has gone longer than she expected. She checks back in out her thoughts, Maya is rambling about the awful chitterling smell Grandma Jesslyn left in the kitchen. This made Olivia snicker she never did like chitterlings. The slithered grayish meat made her stomach turn, her father would curse violently whenever the aroma absorbed their house. He was smart enough not to offend Grandma Jesslynn. He may have kept everyone else on a tight rope, but Jesslyn was not a woman to be crossed.

Eventually they say their goodbyes and Olivia hastily hangs up the phone. Taking a step off the chaise she goes in pursuit of her ivory clutch. She checks it makes sure that her wallet is inside along with other essentials that women carry along. One last glance in the mirror she refreshes her gloss., fingers a mass of curls into place and she not ever vain, let's a prideful smile pucker her lips.

Olivia Pope takes steps to the door throws a gaze at her tidy apartment and leads herself out and into a puddle darkness that is brightened with the belly of stars given names, by lovers who wanted to woo with astronomy.

She looks at the stars millions apart far too many to count. She chooses one all her own and lets the wish float off her tongue and into the night's calming eye. The mere act is childish, but she doesn't chide her moment of girlish wanderlust. Foolish she may look with her eyes closed, dressed for a soiree, mouth loose with haunting vowels that speak for a miracle or just hope. She's not really sure but the words sprout wings fluttering out her mouth and jut into the bleeding galaxy.

Platform heels scraping the gum pinned crackled concrete , she leaves her apartment behind, hailing a beeping cab she lets the excited nervousness creep down her insides , and tonight she will be brave again.

**A/N: Sorry for the delay, but it wasn't exactly writer's block but my writing style has changed and I'm coming to terms with that. I know there is no Olitz in this chapter, but I'm building it up slowly. I promise the third chapter will be what you're waiting for. Also I don't know if I said this before but this will not be a multi chapter fic, the most I will do for this is five chapters. **

**On a sad note my story Blueberry Somersaults is on an indefinite hiatus. I'm not sure if I will continue further. I guess I'm not interested in the story anymore and I wanted to go in a different direction with my fanfic writing. I may write one huge epilogue just to give it a standard ending, but for now it is not my focus. I would like to focus on this fic and a series of one shots that I'm really excited about. I'm super sorry to those who enjoyed the story. Don't worry I feel like crap, but I could not find the commitment to the story.**

**Thank you for your kind reviews and interest in this story. It's humbling and gratifying . You guys reading and reviewing is much appreciated. **


End file.
